Bruine de Bruin, W orcid.org/0000-0002-1601-789X and Wong-Parodi, G (2014) The role of initial affective impressions in responses to educational communications: The case of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20 (2). pp. 126-135. ISSN 1076-898X
Abstract
Emerging technologies promise potential benefits at a potential cost. Developers of educational communications aim to improve people's understanding and to facilitate public debate. However, even relatively uninformed recipients may have initial feelings that are difficult to change. We report that people's initial affective impressions about carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a low-carbon coal-based electricity-generation technology with which most people are unfamiliar, influences how they interpret previously validated education materials. As a result, even individuals who had originally self-identified as uninformed persisted in their initial feelings after reading the educational communication-though perseverance of feelings about CCS was stronger among recipients who had originally self-identified as relatively informed (Study 1). Moreover, uninformed recipients whose initial feelings were experimentally manipulated by relatively uninformative pro-CCS or anti-CCS arguments persisted in their manipulated feelings after reading the educational communication, due to evaluating the educational communication in line with their manipulated impressions (Study 2). Hence, our results suggest that educational communications will have more impact if they are disseminated before people form strong feelings about the topic under consideration, especially if these are based on little to no factual understanding.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014, American Psychological Association Inc. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record |
Keywords: | Educational communication; Impression formation; Public perceptions of emerging technologies |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Decision Research (LUBS) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 Jan 2015 12:03 |
Last Modified: | 31 Mar 2021 13:28 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xap0000008 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Psychological Association |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1037/xap0000008 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:82398 |